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The truth of the matter is… I have nothing to write about. At least, not results of efforts, progress to report, or a list of things accomplished.

What I have managed to do in the last three weeks is 1.) Destroy my car’s transmission on a pothole so that I have to walk to the bathroom at the grocery store every morning to use the bathroom. After all, we have no working toilets at home that I can afford to have fixed. Sinks and showers, sure. But not toilets. Three non-working toilets that would cost over a thousand dollars and a dug-up floor in order to TRY to get one working via plumber expertise. 2.) I have also gotten enough walking done to get my diabetes under control. 126,060 steps recorded on my phone app plus many, many others taken without my phone in my pocket in the month of September so far have returned my A1C to pre-diabetic levels even though I have had diabetes for 22 years. 3.) I have started two new writing projects even though I have two others almost finished that were supposed to be done back in June but still remain incomplete by a few hundred words and thirty pages of proofreading. Truthfully, writing is stalled in a never-ending spin cycle. I am writing but not finishing. Just going round and round.

I am still a nudist who has to wear clothes all the time. Even at night. Things are bleeding that shouldn’t be and going to the doctor is out of the question because it is too far to walk.

But somehow we will make it through. The world is falling apart. But it is always falling apart. Life is held together by Band-Aids and rubber bands. The only thing that has changed is that I am even older now and much more easily tired out.

I hope at least you can enjoy the pictures. I know my ironic humor has gotten a bit rusty and ruined by old age.

Yes, my mother died a year ago. I am in my middle 60s, she was in her late 80s when she passed away. That is a long time to have someone in your life, more than 60 years of love and care. She was a registered nurse working in hospitals in Iowa and Texas for more than 40 years. She taught me about service to others. It is the main reason I became a teacher of children rather than a comic book artist.

She also taught me to make porcelain dolls. We went together on a kiln from California, each of us paying half of the thing’s value. She and her doll-making friends led the way, learning how to fire the porcelain, paint the dolls, give them wigs, make their clothes, and basically give them life. She taught me this art too.

This is one she made for me. The pattern was called “Tom Sawyer.” I call him Tom. He’s entirely lifelike. That is why he has to live in or near my bedroom. My wife doesn’t like the way he looks at her. And so she claims he could come to life in the night and do goblin-like tricks against her.

Personally, I defend him since he has taken the blame for things I actually did on more than one occasion.

Nicole (Below) is also one she made with her own hands. The clothes on these dolls were made with her sewing skills as well.

She is the one at the root of my doll-collecting mania.

Yes, the Queen is dead. I heard the news from England. But she has also been gone from my life for a year now. My heart is still broken. And I feel bad for the one in England too. But I didn’t really know her.

 

 

Millis

He was once an ordinary pet rabbit, transformed through an accident involving a time-traveler’s alien-created mechanical carrot.

He is a character in;

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

 

 

       Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates (his girlfriend)  (She forced me to write that last thing, Mike.)

Mike is a member of the Murphy clan who resides in Murphy Mansion with many other Murphys.  Blueberry is the girl who chased him until she caught him and turned him into her boyfriend.

Seen in the novels;

The Bicycle Wheel Genius

Magical Miss Morgan

Catch a Falling Star  (only Mike is in that one)  (He forced me to write that, Blue)

Valerie Clarke

Valerie is a young Iowan farmgirl who lost her father far too soon.  She loves skateboards, 80’s music, and boys, especially boys who can sing.

She is a main character in;

Snow Babies

Sing Sad Songs

She is also an important character in;

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

 

 

 

Sherry Cobble

Sherry and her twin sister, Shelly, look almost exactly alike.  They are, with both of their parents, practicing nudists.  They love being nude at home on the farm, at the Sunshine Club in Clear Lake, and at school when they can get away with it (which is mostly a matter of girls’ locker rooms.)

Sherry and her twin are important characters in;

Superchicken

     Recipes for Gingerbread Children

     The Baby Werewolf

     Orben Wallace, bicycle engineer

Orben came to Norwall after a tragic fire in his home and laboratory killed his family.  He switched from physics to bicycle engineering and opened a new lab where it is rumored that he also created sentient robots, time travel machines, supercomputers, and had relationships with aliens and time travelers.  Of course the only physical proof of anything are the bicycles he made.

He is a main character in; The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

He is also an important character in; Catch a Falling Star

 

Anneliese Stein

Anneliese is a gingerbread cookie brought back to life through magical baking skills of her human mother, Grandma Gretel Stein.  She was also a human girl in the 1930’s and early 1940’s who also had, unfortunately, a Jewish father.  Okay, I know… I will explain better later.

She is an important character in;

Recipes for Gingerbread Children

 

This will have to be finished another day.  I have too many more characters to show you, and my Internet is giving out.

Yep, Sunset Village is the place where I am living now, the series of houses settled in the valley of pain and deterioration where soon the sun will go down and the world will end.

If we are lucky as a country, it will end for me some night in my sleep of natural causes. And it will not end for everybody in the world. But we can’t re-elect leaders who will burn it all down in the name of profits over people. And Donald Trump, a known hater of windmills and other renewable energy, was rescued from indictment over the documents he was keeping in Mar-a-Lago to share with guests and employees curious about nuclear secrets by a Trump-appointed judge in Florida.

Dang! End-of-the-world stuff! I hope you all are comfortable here in Sunset Village as the sun goes down behind the mountains.

Wow, this is potentially a very short essay. The answer to what the title suggests is easily one of the many synonyms for “Zero.” “Nada” en español. “Nichts” auf Deutsch.

My sex-education history is very middle-class American from the 1950s and early 1960s. You might think I would’ve learned about the facts of life from my mother the registered nurse of many years. And fathers back then were expected to have that “awkward talk” with their sons about birds and bees in such a way that boys would understand about storks being nonsense and cabbage patches with babies in them were only for really weird cartoons.

But when asked, my mother said, “You will be learning about that in school when the time comes.” And my dad said, “You already learned about that, haven’t you?” To which he did not wait for a reply.

Ah, well, I got the information from a school friend who was almost a year older than me, and therefore he knew everything. He described for me how it worked. I was horrified and didn’t believe him. He tried and failed to show me how to masturbate, and tried to explain what a blow job was. So, I learned it all from “Buck” before that was ever even his nickname. And miraculously, everything he taught me had a glimmer of truth in it but was almost entirely wrong.

There were, of course, opportunities to see girls naked at various times. But when we tried to bribe them, we never had what they wanted. And the one birthday party where all the girls in my class got to see the boys skinny-dipping in the creek, an incident I wrote about elsewhere, I was lucky enough to only be standing on the bank, fully dressed, and watching the naked little boys splash and play when the girls were spotted watching at the top of the hill. So, my knowledge of female anatomy consisted of seeing sisters sometimes and wondering if what Brian said about them having sexual organs in the middle of their backs was actually true. How were we supposed to know? Being naked in co-ed situations was forbidden.

But then the worst happened. I was sexually assaulted by another boy, an older, bigger, and stronger boy. I was traumatized. And sexuality became a thing of my haunted nightmares. And nobody had, at that point in my life, ever told me the actual truth about where babies came from and what sex was actually all about.

I truly hated myself from the ages of ten through eighteen. I harmed myself, intentionally burning the skin on my lower back against the heating grate in our house during winter because I felt the need to make sexual urges and feelings go away. I seriously planned to kill myself as a sophomore in high school. My parents never knew anything about it. The high school counselor knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him what was actually wrong because I was repressing the memory hard at that point, and didn’t know how to put anything into words. He had to settle for assuring me that I could tell him anything if and when I was ready. But the Methodist minister had taken it upon himself to teach us the actual facts of life in middle school. During confirmation class, he drew the reproductive parts both inside and outside, male and female on the chalkboard in the church basement. He explained how babies were made and how everything functioned. He explained that no part of the process was a sin in itself. Only the misuse of the process was frowned upon by God. He explained how masturbation was a natural part of growing up and sexual urges could be transformed into lifelong love and intimacy. It was the first ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds that were killing me.

And then came that Saturday afternoon where I had made up my mind to put an end to it with a kitchen knife. But before I either cut my wrists or stabbed myself in the heart as I had often thought about doing, I called a friend one last time. We didn’t talk about being depressed or what I was planning to do. But he sensed something was up. Of the many things we talked about, he managed to say I was a good friend and he liked being able to talk about things with me. I never told him the truth about it. But his generosity in that moment saved my life. I owe him what I could only repay by living a good life and being a good person. I am fairly sure he has done the same.

So, what does any of this have to do with what Mickey knows about sexuality?

Well, there are a few assertions I can make that are true for my life.

1. Sex is a good thing. It allows you to connect intimately with another human being. It nurtures love and family ties for however long the individuals involved are capable of it.
2. Children should be taught about sex from an early age. That is the only way to protect them from wrong information and being vulnerable to predators like the one who got hold of me.
3. Masturbation is not an evil thing. It helps you learn your body’s abilities and limits and prepares you for a sex life you can share with someone else. It also boosts your immune system and helps fight depression.
4. Sex is about love, not exploitation, power, or control over someone else. It is not to be used to harm anyone, although many use it in that way. Sex is only dirty and evil if it is used wrongly.
5. People need to hear these things about sex. Too many don’t know what they need to know at the time they need to know it.
6. I am not advocating free love, only good love, no matter how it is made good for you.

So, yes, I know… Mickey is an idiot. He is coming from a rather dark place to assert these things are true. But isn’t that what life is for? To use the hard things, the bad things, the dark and evil things, the things you had to overcome in the course of your life to make a little wisdom to pass along to someone else?

Be happy. Be well. And if you are having great sex in your life, you are allowed to enjoy it.